ophiure
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea
Example Sentences
- "SHORT-SPINED OPHIURE."
- "In the Ophiure, the arms are of great length, and in Euryale, each arm, directly it stretches out beyond the body, divides into two branches, and these again into others, which again and again divide, assuming the appearance of interweaving branches of a tree, and which they employ for entangling their prey."
- "From the bottom of his nets a fisherman one day gave me three almost dying creatures, a sea hedgehog, a sea star, and another star, a pretty ophiure, which still moved and soon lost its delicate arms."
- "Their food consisted of shells, worms, and Ophiures."
- "Other symbionts found on the same host were: Lissoporcellana pectinata Haig (Porcellanidae), crabs Quadrella sp. (Trapeziidae), some specimens of spider-crab family Majidae, and ophiures (Echinodermata, Ophiuroidea)."
- "As for the species level, ophiures Amphiodia urtica dominate."
Etymology
From translingual genus name Ophiura (originally species name in Linnaeus), from New Latin ophiurus (“brittle star”), from Ancient Greek ὄφις (óphis, “serpent”) + οὐρά (ourá, “tail”) (referring to the serpent-like arms of the brittle star). This English form by conflation with suffix -ure (“result of an action; official procedure”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: -, ophiurus, ὄφις